Build an AirBnB Clone in a Day | Hacker News Reader

Build an AirBnB Clone in a Day

blog.stackmob.com

91 pointsSidneyAllen42 comments

In the conclusion, you say:

> What’s next? Well you can extend your app by adding payment options, email notifications, user feedback. . .

Aren't those core features of AirBnB? That's like saying "Next, you build the entire application." So you really haven't built a clone at all, you've just built an empty shell with a tiny fraction of the functionality.

Using Stripe, disquss etc it should be doable in a couple of hours/days.

Of course the main feature of AirBnB and the large copycats is the market penetration. Nobody cares if you have a fancy backend or e.g. a node.js based mobile app. It's about active users and transactions.

This is absolutely true and I agree, but you also totally missed the point of the post, and this criticism is totally off-base.

OP wrote this post as a demonstration of how to get a native ios app prototype up and running quickly using tools like app design vault and stackmob, not in order to make any comments about airbnb or to actually try to make a full business out of this clone. The basic Airbnb interface/data structure was simply used as an example framework for the author to show off the tools and workflow.

I do think that an adjustment to the title would help to clear up the confusion around this -- this is not the only post in this thread making a similar criticism.

This just in: when you have a proven example application, an existing design, pre-fab content, known behavior... writing software is easy.

I'm fighting the urge to say "no shit".

Maybe the title should be modified to better fit the content of the post then? If I wrote an article called "How to build a Lamborghini clone for $2,500" but demonstrated how to put a look-alike body kit on an old Honda Civic, you would be justified in telling me that I didn't accomplish my stated intention.

It's not totally off-base. The OP wrote:

"Luckily, with the availability of backend services and tools like StackMob, you can fairly quickly come up with a very functional app in a matter of hours."

It's not a functional app unless it has all of the back-end structures that make the actual thing an 'application'.

The basic Airbnb interface/data structure was simply used as an example framework for the author to show off the tools and workflow.

That was implied, but not stated, hence the criticism. Hyperbole wins again!

It is what it is. A great demonstration of developer productivity. And the stack mob API is free.

Not to mention it's based on a third party vendor that not only has the API but also the schema.

Not to mention no time at all was spent (counted) on the app design and code regarding the logic for layouts.

"Now, draw the rest of the owl."

Wow, seeing this at the top of this thread really makes me feel HN is jumping the proverbial shark.

The entire post is not a "Hey, fuck BnB, we can do it in 2 hours!". It's about how you can quickly iterate an application using StackMob.

It's a tech demo, showing off StackMob, not putting down BnB.

Christ. :/

Well, they used a link bait title to get click-throughs, and the article didn't live up to their hype. It's unsurprising that some people are calling them out on it.

EDIT - I'm glad this is off the front page. This etiquette kick that HN is on is really tiresome. None of you or me (except maybe pg) are the arbiters of what defines polite discourse here. And shame on me for getting dragged into it. The policy I strive towards is that if it's a bad comment (egregiously wrong, trolling, etc) I downvote, if it's a good comment I upvote, and if it's interesting and I have something interesting to add I upvote and reply. It's not the worst policy.

I'm sorry to add fuel to the fire but I've noticed this last few weeks. Almost every single top post to every new Show HN type submission is a brutal teardown or sometimes unfounded criticism. This kind of behavior does not encourage sharing of neat things we build. I've made many things and shared on HN in the past but I'm pretty sure if I were to submit similar things today I'd be called out for not supporting PlatformOfChoice in v0.1a or using improper font-size. I would be nice if people constructively criticized the core product being shared not the tertiary aspects.

If I write a blog post on how to find and fix leaks in single-page JS apps in various browsers, the top post shouldn't be the one complaining about how Chrome takes more memory than Firefox. Comments like that are certainly on topic because memory leaks end up using more memory by definition. The problem is that those kind of comments are too generic to improve anything for anyone but incite enough vitriol to get voted to the top. The top post should be the one finding faults with my leak handling practices and suggesting better methods of doing the same.

> It's about how you can quickly iterate an application using StackMob

Then the title should say that.

If you dupe people into reading your article by using a misleading headline, you should be held accountable for it.

Almost every single non-reply post on this article is criticizing how much the app isn't AirBnB. Maybe the new measure of success on HN is finding the excellent discussions under those criticizing posts? Those criticizing top posts always have a huge amount of discussion under them.

why did you use the word "iterate"[1] in this context?

[1]http://www.thefreedictionary.com/iterate

Google it.

Classic top-ranked, snarky "missing the entire point" comment.

It's less of missing the entire point and more of the article being link bait.

It's still a more interesting article than "build a blog in two hours" or "chat apps in 3.14 lines of code!". There will always be functionality left for later but as an example of a quick prototyping framework I think the article is pretty great.

If only you could attribute your images properly. I can't find an attribution or mention of PlaceIt or Breezi anywhere.

Example screenshot used in blog post: http://placeit.breezi.com/productshots/40

Thanks for catching that. We'll update the post with an attribution.

Thanks! Haha, the only reason I recognized it so quickly is because I use their tool so often.

It's really awesome and deserves a mentioned wherever used.

Absolutely. I was wondering how our guest author had created those cool screenshots. Attribution added!

Yeah, I missed that. I always attribute to breezi on my blog. Thanks for the heads up :-)

I hadn't heard of PlaceIt before. Thanks for mentioning it! I love how laid back their attribution policy is: http://breezi.com/blog/using-placeit-images-for-commercial-p... .

If there's a need to assign attribution then there isn't a need to use this tool.

If only we could build the airbnb user base up in a day as well.

I (and most here) can clone most sites, but can't create a business.

Absolutely - Marketing first. Product second.

What the post is trying to achieve is to show people how easy it is to get the technology up and running. Especially with the tools available today.

The tech shouldn't hold you back. But of course, if you build it, they won't come. The marketing is another ball game entirely

Exactly. These "I built a clone of X in Y hours" posts seem to imply that a website or a mobile app are what makes a successful company. In reality they are just the tip of the iceberg. What you don't see are the countless hours of hustling, the distribution deals, the marketing, the organic growth of the brand, etc, etc.

It could be like saying: "hey, I just built a clone of McDonalds; I made a burger with fries."

This is a demo of StackMob, AirBnB was probably chosen as a reasonably realistic example that isn't a todo app.

It could be like saying: "hey, I just built a clone of McDonalds; I made a burger with fries."

Why troll? This is obviously a developer tutorial meant to show off a platform. I just can't believe you actually think the author claimed to clone AirBnB's whole business in this article.

Did you read the article?

The title may be a bit misleading, but having read the article, it's obvious this is about how easy the tools they suggest make building (scaffolding?) an AirBnB app, not how easy it is to build an AirBnB business.

It was a joke..

It never fails to amaze how so many tech folk are such pedants. For all of you who are whining about this not being a real clone for any number of reasons you are well and truly stuck in the trees. You've failed to notice that this is a demo of the StackMob API which is more than a common Hello World, Blog engine or ToDo list. There is a lot of great stuff here and the OP makes a great case for StackMob. Grow up.

Why not title it, "How to use StackMob," or something like that?

I don't think you can call this a 'clone'. It's at most a proof of concept. I can build a POC of Airbnb in Rails in an hour. It doesn't mean I should build an Airbnb clone in Rails.

Please do so and write up a post about doing it with a link here on HN. It would give your comment more credibility.

I'm sure StackMob is a great product and time saver, but the title is incredibly misleading. I guess everyone does it these days to get the page hits.

"I timed it and it took about 16 hours over the course of three days to get this app up and running."

Lol. That's hardly one day then and as people have said it's not close to being a clone.

Also there is a free template worth $69 included: http://www.appdesignvault.com/stackmob-gift/

Mandatory http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2009/07/code-its-trivial.ht...

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